Games Industry transitioning to broadcast model

Alex St. John, the guy who said consoles will be dead in few years and the founder of WildTangent (famous for distributing spyware) is back again with some words of wisdom;

“The internet is allowing the games business - which is a remarkably successful business considering how bad the business model is - into a broadcast model where you see enormous scale of efficiency and very mass market appeal of gaming,”

You can read the full statement here.

Ben Cousins Interview

Gamasutra did a QnA session with Ben Cousins, the producer of upcoming browser based Battlefield: Heroes game. Here’s a snip:

Now, there are a couple questions that jump off from that, but the first one is: so, the business model for the game is microtransactions?

BC: The business model is advertising in the game’s website, and in the game’s menu, but not in the game itself. And revenue from micro-item sales.

Read the full interview here

Starcraft II: “The model for in-game advertising”

According to Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision, Starcraft II may finally be the game that propells in-game advertising to next level. Kotick had a handful things to say at Morgan Stanley Technology Conference. Here’s a snippet:

“What we’ve realized is that [there is] the opportunity [in] just taking the institutional knowledge that exists at Blizzard,” Kotick stated. “For example, how do we take Guitar Hero, which is the best-selling game that we’ve ever had, and take that to Korea, or take that to China, and be thoughtful about it. These guys have so much institutional expertise about how you’ve got to market in these territories.”

Read more after the jump. Read more